calling slavery an institution puts it on a par with social institutions such as marriage. The Southerners regarded slavery as one of the fundamental building blocks of their society. (This is one reason that even non slave-owning Southerners defended it).

it does not mention the issue of slaves at all. The actual nature of the peculiarinstitution was almost irrelevant to the reasons the South fought for it; for them, the Civil War was about states’ rights rather than slavery.